The present invention relates to an apparatus for detecting microorganisms in a sample, and more specifically, relates to a microorganism detection apparatus and a microorganism detection cassette that are used in infectious disease diagnosis, bacteriological food examinations, environmental microorganism detection, or quality maintenance of washing water for semiconductors.
Recently, rapid advances have been made in technologies employed for the culturing and the provision of stem cells that, when introduced into the human body on the surface of medical instruments, reduce the possibility that the instruments will be violently rejected, and for the culturing of stem cells to obtain cells having specialized functions. For these cell culturing technologies, great care must be taken to ensure that the cells to be introduced into the human body are isolated and to prevent their contamination with microorganisms. Accordingly, accompanying advances in applicable systems engineering, there have been developed a number of microorganism detection methods, one of which employs a phenol oxidase precursor for this purpose (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. Hei 09-098798).
Also available is a microorganism detection apparatus, disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-144194, that employs a sampling filter on which specific microorganisms are cultured for which fluorescence observation detection is performed.
However, when the conventional method that employs a phenol oxidase precursor is used, the sensitivity with which microorganisms, especially gram-negative bacteria, are detected is low. Further, when fluorescent observation is used for detection, although it is possible to measure specific microorganisms, light emitted by impurities can produce erroneous results.